In algae, significant fractions of daily photosynthetic productivity
can be lost at night to respiration. Night biomass loss remains an underappreciated
aspect of optimizing algae productivity in outdoor pond
cultivation and, as suggested by Hu et al. [23], potentially represents
one of the most important limitations to productivity. From the collected
data in this study, the rate and extent of biomass loss in the dark are a
species-specific physiological characteristic mediated by environmental
conditions. Two dominant environmental factors driving biomass loss
in algae cultures are night pond water temperature and light exposure
prior to the dark period. All three organisms characterized for night biomass
loss were highly sensitive to growth phase prior to the dark period,
which relates to biomass density and therefore average light
intensity (i.e., late exponential=high light intensity, linear=medium
light intensity and late linear = low light intensity, see also Tables S1